


Joe

by poisontaster



Series: AKB Outtakes [11]
Category: Actor RPF, CW Network RPF, Supernatural RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Slavery, Drug Addiction, M/M, Past Abuse, Recreational Drug Use, Sexual Slavery, Slavery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-09
Updated: 2013-02-09
Packaged: 2017-11-28 18:29:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/677489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/poisontaster/pseuds/poisontaster
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Joe tries to get some perspective on his past.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Joe

Fandom: RPF  
Pairing: Joseph Gordon-Levitt/Mickey Rourke (past)  
Rating: Adult  
Word Count: 4,582  
Contains: Slavery, non-explicit mentions of underaged sex of extremely dubious consent, non-explicit physical abuse, psychological abuse/damage, drug use.  
Disclaimer: This is in no way a true story.   
AN: This is a [AKB]() outtake. It mainly takes place after A Kept Boy. Previous knowledge is recommended.

* * *

He was six (1987) when Mick bought him, though he was fourteen (1995) before Mick laid a hand on him. Sexually, at least.

"I don't fuck kids," Mick had said, which was true, as far as that went. After so many years in Mick's House of Crazy, Joe wasn't much of a kid anymore and he was—is—fucked up enough to be unsure, at this late date, about whose idea it was. 

It could've been his—though it probably wasn't. 

He's pretty sure he told the priest it was him, in weekly confession, though. 

It feels like the opening line of a joke, a Jew whose spent most of his life as a practicing Roman Catholic, but—Jew, Jewish—it's mostly only words to him. He's done his research, of course, relic of the period in time when he was trying hardest to figure out who he was and before the realization that he's exactly no more and no less than what Mick made him. 

Meeting Jensen was kind of a relief because even if he does have a stick up his ass, he was owned by Tom Cruise. He understands what it's like. Body-slavery in general is living in a glass house. With someone like Cruise, someone like Mick, it's like living in a glass house with cutting edges.

He thinks he did the penance, too, dammit. 

Joe doesn't remember how old he was the first time Mick hit him. 

It wasn't a constant thing. Mick was an angry guy, the angriest guy Joe had ever known, but it took time for that anger to build up, poisonously, to a point where it would erupt into violence and it took even more for that violence to erupt over a person. Mick was just as likely to break his own hand punching a wall. 

But Mick had rules. Mick had lots of rules and sometimes they weren't the same rules as yesterday, or they depended on the time of year or where they were, and no one, not even Mick could keep up with what all of them were, though, of course, they all tried. 

"What're you writing?" There's the crack- _fizz_ of a soda opening and then Jared throws himself into the chair across from Joe, grinning. The grin doesn't seem to mean anything, just Jared's default expression, though, unlike a lot of other slaves Joe knew or had met, it _also_ seemed to be genuine. A curiosity, much like Jared himself. 

Joe looks down at the little leather-bound notebook. The question seems to have completely blanked his mind. Even seeing the gawky scribble of his own hand, it all suddenly looks completely unfamiliar, like waking from a blackout or a dream and finding himself _in medias res_. 

"Nothing." He shrugs. 

"It doesn't look like nothing." Like the smile, flirtation seems to be Jared's default mode. Joe can't tell how intentional it is, though, to be fair, Jared also seems to have had sex with everyone at Jeff's, including the otherwise inviolate Jensen, so clearly, Jared is just a really happy guy who likes to fuck a lot. 

"Something for Jeff. Sorta," Joe says finally, both to stave off having to explain further and because he doesn't know how to explain any better than that. For a given value of 'like', and for as much as Jensen can be counted on to like anything, he seems to like his visits—sessions—with Cate. How much of that has to do with the fact that _Jeff_ likes what's come out of Jensen's sessions with Cate is anyone's guess. But therapy…therapy didn't work so good for Joe. 

Cate's a nice enough person and Joe knows he's screwed up enough from everything with Mick that he wants it to work out, but after a half dozen sessions, nothing was clicking and Joe got the impression that Cate knew as well as he did that it just wasn't going to. 

The book is the compromise they all came up with. 

As expected, the mention of Jeff makes Jared's expression open in understanding…or as close as anyone seems to get, when it comes to Jeff. 

"He's just amazed that anyone can write that much," Chad chimes in, legging over the back of one of the other chairs to drop unceremoniously into its seat. "We just got him to be able to spell his own name a couple months ago."

Jared swipes at Chad, but it's lazy and fond and Chad ducks it easy, crunching chips the whole time. 

"So, what _are_ you writing? A novel or something?" Chad snags the soda right out of Jared's fingers, slurping noisily and with every evidence of delight while Jared snatches Chad's chip bag in retaliation. 

"No." Joe clips his pen to the pages and closes the little book, not sure if he's grateful for or annoyed by the interruption. Thinking too much about Mick is always a dicey business. 

"No?" Chad repeats, dangling the end of the question like he dangles bits of spit-covered rope for the dogs.

"No," Joe says again, and gets up from the table, because he's no one's dog. 

Not anymore.

***

It's not the cage Joe dreams about that night, though.

He wakes up crawling out of the bed and Adrianne pushing him back, saying, "Joe, goddamn it, wake up, c'mon, _Joe_!"

His face is hurting and it filters in to him that it's not a dream, that pain, that Adrianne must have cracked him one—a good one—to wake him up. And that means he had to have been making enough noise to be heard outside his little bedroom. 

When she sees that he's up, Adrianne settles back on her heels, shaking her hair back over her shoulder. She's not wearing anything but a pair of panties. The second he's lucid enough to realize that, Joe sits up and looks off, toward the corner. 

"I appreciate the chivalry, but they're just tits," Adrianne says dryly. She punches him lightly in the shoulder. "Y'all right?"

"Yeah," Joe says, though he's not sure that's true, not at all.

He must not be very convincing to her, either, because Adrianne snorts. "Yeah, okay." She studies him a moment. "So. Weed, booze, a good cuppa coffee, a glass of warm milk? What do you need?"

"I don't know." Joe shakes his head. "A minute. I need a minute."

Adrienne gazes at him another few seconds in silence before slapping her knees lightly and rising to her full, impressive height. "Okay, then," she says, in the same brisk but not-unkind voice. "I'll just leave you to it, then…"

"No—" Though he doesn't initiate a lot of physical contact, Joe grabs Adrianne's wrist, wanting—needing—the touch, the feeling of another person against his skin that isn't just the ghost of Mick. "Please. Don't go."

Adrianne makes no move to pull out of his grip, but her hesitation is palpable, even for the few seconds it takes for him to grit out, "I don't… I don't want to fuck you." 

Adrianne's mouth flattens a little and her hip juts, whether in disbelief or just plain wounded outrage, but there's a surprising lack of bullshit to the people here, one of the things Joe likes most about being Jeff's slave.

"Please," he says again, tilting his head back to look her in the eyes.

Adrianne sighs before nudging his shin with her knee. "Shove over. I want the outside."

A little surprised, and a lot gratified, Joe shoves over.

***

It's true what he said: he doesn't want to fuck Adrianne.

What he has _not_ mentioned to anyone, however, is that he can't, even if he wanted to. 

All the machinery works. He wakes up plenty of mornings with that one-eyed salute. Sometimes nights, too, if it's one of the 'good' dreams about Mick (protip: they're just nightmares in different, more confusing clothing). He's capable of getting hard. He just doesn't. Not in any conscious way. Not _while_ conscious.

Because of his shoulders, he was never going to be sold to anyone as a body-slave again. In his more paranoid moments—of which there are plenty, because he is and always will be Mick's, after all—Joe thinks maybe that was Mick's plan the whole time, to keep anyone else from having what was always Mick's alone. He was like that with Carré, too, though never so dramatically. What Mick owned was his forever. 

But in any case, because he was never going to be rated for (legal) sexual performance again, he didn't have to go through the same tests a body-slave would, when he was sold. He wasn't measured, or probed, or roused with that buzzing, clinical wand, wasn't milked for his ejaculate or measured for how long he could hold back from orgasm. 

His training meant he was still worth _something_ , but the cost of his medical care and his recovery and his detox meant that it wasn't much, not enough for anyone to care. The men at the clearing house knew he was most of the way to being medical waste and none of them gave a damn if he got hard when they fucked him. And then he was sold to Jeff. Who, while a nice guy, doesn't care any more than anyone else whether Joe's dick works or not.

Maybe that's unfair. Jeff's the kind of guy who would _care_ , of course he would. If Joe ever thought to mention it to him. But as long as no one mentions it to Jeff—and Joe's in no hurry to—Jeff doesn't have to care. 

Sometimes Joe thinks he should worry about it more, but he's been a slave a long time. Most of his life. 

It's strangely freeing to know that he's the only one who knows or cares about the disposition of his dick, at this point in time.

***

Joe has met Tom Cruise on a few occasions, as much as any slave can be considered to have 'met' one of their betters. Certainly, Joe was always beneath Cruise's notice, even on the rare occasion he was handling business for Mick.

For the most part, Cruise is nothing like Mick—truth be told, Mick had nothing but contempt for Cruise, and vice versa—but the one thing they do have in common is an almost supernatural charisma. A King's magic, Joe heard someone call it once, a phrase that almost knocked him over with its rightness.

Joe guesses it makes sense, for all of that. Can't be that insane without something to make up for it, a survival trait.

Living with Mick… Joe'd always known things were not-good, sometimes verging into _really fucking bad_ , but Mick had a way of making you not care. Of thinking that this was the normal order of things and if it wasn't, then fuck normal, we don't need no stinkin' normal. 

_(sometimes, right at the edge of hearing, or right at the edge of his dreams, he hears his own voice, shrilly begging: "Please, Mick, please; please, don't, please don't!")_

It was easier when they had him serving Mary-Louise. There was enough actual work and make-work created by Mary-Louise's bored, inventive mind that, for months, he hadn't had time to think. 

He hadn't really _liked_ Mary-Louise, a sentiment not all that uncommon in Jeff's house, but there was still a blessing in that time, in the hands of a relatively calm and stable master and flying mostly under the radar of everyone but Mary-Louise. It was a better fate than he'd had any right to expect, damaged as he was. Joe was grateful. He _is_ grateful. 

But, even knowing how much better off he is, gratitude feels like a thin and sour wine at those times he's so homesick that it's like a junkie's itch/ache in the bones. 

"Fucking Chad," Adrianne—Annie; he's apparently enough of an insider now that she makes him call her Annie—stalks into his room and drops down on Joe's bed, thumbing agitatedly at her uncooperative lighter several times before throwing it into the wall. The cigarette drooping from her lips follows it a second later, far less aerodynamically. "He's such an asshole."

Joe stoops to pick up the lighter and the cigarette. He sits next to Annie on the bed and pokes the filter end of the cigarette at her mouth until she accepts it from him. "What happened?" he asks, coaxing the lighter to flame. Annie steadies herself with a hand on his wrist and the other holding her hair back as she leans the tip of her cigarette into the fire. 

"Oh," she inhales, a universe of irritation in that single syllable and the frown line etched under the mole between her thick eyebrows. She's never asked him if he minds the smoke or the smell and he's never had to admit that it reminds him, at least faintly, of Mick. "He thinks we're fucking."

"And?" It's not at all surprising. Annie's taken to sleeping with him three or four nights out of the week, depending on how bad his nightmares have been. Even if Joe had anything left resembling pride, it wouldn't have let him ask Annie why she does it; he's too pathetically grateful that she does. In the same way, he hasn't let himself think about whether it would be a problem. With the way everyone around here seems to bed hop with just about everyone else, he wouldn't have thought so, but he's still the New Guy. 

Annie shrugs, leaning back to scoop up the cheap tin ashtray she stows on his windowsill. "And…he's Chad," she says, frowning, as if that settles the whole thing. 

"You can tell him we're not," Joe offers, spinning the lighter around in his fingers. "If it helps."

"Oh, _fuck_ Chad." Annie somehow tucks, pivots and lifts her legs, to swing them over Joe's head so she can stretch out full-length on the bed. "It's none of his goddamned business." She seems to brood on that for a while, smoking the cigarette with all the angry absorption of a 40's vamp. Then, suddenly, she looks at him. "What are you still doing up, anyway? We all thought you'd gone to bed hours ago."

Joe shrugs. "Couldn't sleep."

"Awwww." Annie coos at him, smiling and wraps her fingers in the sleeve of his t-shirt, tugging him down to her side, in the circle of her arm. "Momma's here now."

***

He dreams of the hospital, the hard-faced matron who seemed to think his injuries _( Please, Mick, please; please, don't, please don't!)_ were his own fault, as if, had the razor had been his to wield, he would've left himself like this, valueless and alive, in the hands of Commerce.

It was the first time he'd ever slept alone and even the narrowness of the hospital bed couldn't make that okay. The matron had pocketed most of his pain meds—for personal use or profit, he never knew—knowing that no one would listen to the junkie whore if he complained about his level of pain...which, given the mess Mick had made of his shoulders and the fact that he was detoxing at the same time, was considerable. 

But mostly what Joe remembers is the gaping absence of Mick.

Mick always came to the hospital with him, or showed up shortly thereafter. Some of it was guilt, because oftentimes, the injuries were Mick-inflicted, but the rest of it was that he was Mick's, Mick's boy, and part of being Mick's boy was having Mick there to hold his hand and give him that sad-rueful smile that meant everything was all right again.

In the real world—and even in the clutch of that evil bitch Withdrawal—it hadn't taken Joe long to understand that Mick wasn't coming, that the Mick part of his life was over, though it would be some weeks before he grasped that Mick _also_ couldn't come, locked up tight in a hospital of his own across town, where he'd remain until well after Joe had been sold and the sale sealed. 

But in the dream, there's only the hollowness; the chasm of knowing Mick's not there and that he's not coming, he's never coming and he—Joe—is alone. 

Waking is a nightmare of its own, his lungs starving for breath, gasping, choking for air. It's not crying—his eyes are painfully dry—but it is somewhere between sobbing and hyperventilation, his diaphragm twisting like a wrung rag in his chest. 

Annie hadn't been in with him, but he's whooping loud enough that she comes running. They all come running, Annie kneeling between his knees and Jared rubbing his back, Sandy lingering shy in the doorway and Chad looking around Joe's room like he's casing it for anything interesting or valuable Joe might have. 

Joe can't calm down. 

In his rational mind, he knows it was a dream, only a stupid fucking dream, but the grief, that kid-dumb part of him that can't stop missing Mick, that's real and it's got both bony hands around his throat. 

It's Jared who thinks to go get his stash of pot, toking deeply before tangling his fingers in Joe's hair, tugging Joe's head back and sideways to get a good seal when Jared puts his mouth over Joe's, forcing thick smoke way down into Joe's lungs. 

For long seconds, Joe thinks he's going to suffocate, between his heaving lungs and the steady pressure-influx of Jared's smoke laden breath. Then, just when Joe thinks he can't take any more and he's going to pass out, his throat and chest open, and Jared pulls back. 

Joe immediately busts out coughing, but it's better, things are moving again, his lungs shocked back on track. He's lightheaded and limp by the time Sandy folds his cold, tingly fingers around a chilly glass of horchata. 

"Thanks," Joe says, and even he flinches from the rust and grit of his own voice. 

Annie stands up, one hand proprietarily on Joe's shoulder. "Hey, so…yeah. We probably don't need to all be in here staring at the guy, you know? I got it. You guys can go back to bed, if you want." The _if you want_ is clearly strung on for politeness' sake, the rest of her words have the inflexibility of command. No one would say—at least to Annie's face—that she runs the dorm, but it still remains that, by and large, they all listen to her. 

Which is why everyone looks at Annie first, when Joe manages to choke out, "No."

It's not that he wants them to stay so much as he doesn't want to be by himself. He looks up at Annie, too.

Annie sighs, knots her fingers in Joe's hair and shakes his head back and forth lightly a couple times, the smile that curves her lips going only faintly to her eyes. It's a gaze Joe can't stare into for too long. He cuts his eyes away and bumps Jared in the shoulder with his elbow. "We should finish that bowl," he says, reaching for the little glass pipe held so loosely in Jared's big fingers. "No point in letting good weed go to waste."

No one argues with him.

***

"The damage to your shoulders has healed remarkably well," the Commerce doc comments, once he's done putting Joe through the range of motion and strength tests. No nerve conductivity test this time; and Joe had to struggle to keep the relief off his face. The zaps always linger for days or weeks afterward, either in renewed tingles or brief but terrifying moments of weakness, where the muscles just seem to go limp.

The doctor looks to Jensen, acting as Jeff's Agent so that Jeff himself doesn't have to be bothered by something as mundane and routine as Joe's yearly exam. "Has he been keeping up with his PT?"

"Yes," Jensen says, without so much as a pause or hitch, though his gaze flicks to Joe in a non-expression that has Joe sweating. "We've been very pleased at how well Joe's come along." 

The doc lifts Joe's arm and drags his gloved finger over the little knurled scar on Joe's ribs. It tickles and Joe flinches away, making the doctor frown. "And the gunshot? You're not still having pain there, are you?"

"No," Joe says, stifled. If he'd been ready for it, he could've steeled himself for the touch. "I'm just…ticklish."

"Ah." The doctor pokes the scar—and the through-scar in back—and the flesh around them a little more, but Joe manages to hold firm, even though there's a part of him that wants to laugh at the ridiculousness of all of this. 

No one at Jeff's has ever asked about his scars, though they must be meticulously noted in his provenance; not even Annie, though her fingers will sometimes trace them in the dark, like she's memorizing their shapes. It's unsurprising; no one at Jeff's is all that interested in his body, short that it's capable of doing the work assigned to it, and slaves know better than to ask, for the most part. He wonders, though, if Jensen's going to ask about it, once they're in the car, heading back home. 

He wonders what he can say about it, after all this time. 

_It wasn't his fault_ , feels like a cop-out, however much that may be technically true. So does, _it was an accident_ , the paper-thin excuses of a deluded slave. 

Maybe that's what he is.

_You gotta pick a side._ Joe doesn't remember where or when they were, when Mick said that, but he remembers the silhouette of Mick against the window, the jut of Mick's nose, still proud and aquiline, against the outside glow and the cherry of his cigarette like a lighthouse in the dark. _You pick a side and you stick with it, hell or high water, thunder and lightning. Man who won't pick a side is no man at all._

Joe thinks he could tell Jensen about the scar—about getting shot—if it had just been a story, an anecdote told in his own time. But not as an explanation. Not as an excuse.

But Jensen doesn't ask. Bodhi's starting school—first grade—in a few days; they talk about that all the way home.

***

Pick a side. _That's what Mick said, and that's what I did. I picked a side. His side. But what the fuck does that even mean now?_

_Mick's not dead…I know where he is, I could go there, drive there, today if I wanted…but what good would it do? I belong to someone else. And he has another body-slave._

_And. Do I even want to go back? My body is a roadmap of all the shit…all the shit he did to me. My valueless body. _

_I begged Jensen to make Jeff keep me. Whose side does that put me on?_

_Why the fuck do I care?_

***

It's taken months, but Bodhi now largely sleeps the night through, and in his own bed. There's no need for Joe to keep hovering around the kid's bedroom, so, in a sudden fit of self-consciousness (and, after scrawling a note on the chalkboard wall in case Bodhi should indeed wake up), Joe decides to go down and join everybody else hanging out downstairs.

It's late enough that they've all spread out. Some of them are playing a foul-mouthed and deadly serious game of bid whist. There's an old horror movie from the 80's, but no one seems to be watching it, especially not Misha and Jeremy, wrapped together in a blanket in front of the TV. Through the glass doors, Joe can see the sullen glow and flicker of the fire pit and, once the screaming—from the TV—and cursing—from the card players—dies down, hear the mellow twang of guitars.

Joe wants a bump. 

The thought surprises him, because Commerce detox is…scarily efficient. He hasn't even thought about coke in a really long time. And it's not really the coke that he wants, it's the feeling, numbness and imperviousness all in one. 

The coke had always been Joe's one great secret. Mick's chemical problems were largely prescription, a thin veneer of legitimacy because they'd been prescribed by a doctor. They were _medicine._ Coke, on the other hand, was the refuge of the weak. Which was Joe and Carré, the weak to Mick's strong. 

Joe goes over to the bar and is standing there looking wall-eyed at the rows of bottles, trying to think whether getting blindly drunk will be better or worse when Zach comes in from the patio and edges up to him. 

Joe doesn't actually connect Zach's entrance with himself until Zach nudges Joe with his elbow, opening with, "So, you know I've got these kids, right?"

Joe blinks, for a moment envisioning he's about to be turned into The Trust's day care center. "Yeah?"

Zach looks a little sheepish, scruffing the back of his neck and further fluffing the dandelion pouf of his hair. "Yeah. So, Wendy seems to think that the kids need to know more about their history or some shit, and we're coming up on Rosh Hashanah and…" 

The gears in Joe's brain have to shift with an almost audible grind, but his sense of puzzlement only deepens. Rosh Hashanah? 

Joe doesn't really know what his expression looks like from the outside, but Zach's face alters to something between taut and pleading. "Look, man, she's got this whole…Judaism for Dummies book, and this annotated Torah and, and she bought yarmulkes for me and Ryzer, and…" Another sigh, this one deeper than the first. "She's just really got her mind made up, you know? For the kids."

Joe tries to keep from smiling at the guy's pain, but it's hard going. "Okay, yeah?" He's still not sure where he figures in this equation. His knowledge of Rosh Hashanah pretty much starts and ends with what Wikipedia could tell him. "What's that got to do with me?"

"So, it's not a big deal or anything…I mean, it _is_ a big deal to Wendy, obviously—obviously!—but you know, we can't go to an actual synagogue or anything…" Zach's hand flicks toward his collar, a thin chain that can only barely be classified as such, "but she wants to do something at home and she wanted to know if you'd like to come. Or something."

"You do know that I was pretty much raised Roman Catholic, right?" Joe says, though he turns the invitation over in his mind, like a shiny stone he's not sure what to do with. Jew. Jewish.

Zach shrugs. "Hell, I wasn't raised much of anything at all," Zach says, throwing himself over the bar's top to snag a couple of beers from the ice-filled sink on the other side. The built-in bottle opener is too far away, all the way at the bar's end; Zach produces his lighter and deftly levers the cap off each with a hiss. To Joe's surprise, Zach offers him one as apparently was his intention the whole time. 

"Like I said, it's not a big deal if you don't want to, if it's not your thing. Wendy just thought… _We_ just thought, " Zach amends gamely, with a shrug. "Hey, you're one of the Tribe, too, right?" 

"Yeah," Joe agrees slowly, feeling it out. "I guess I am."


End file.
